RENO, Nev. - Jan. 4, 2021 - A portfolio of five aquatint etchings by the Chilean artist Sebastiàn Matta sold for $3,750, a pictorial letter-sheet from 1856 illustrating all the major types of gold mining done in California by 1855 brought $3,500, a monumental 12-volume railroad survey report published from 1855-1860 compiled to find the best rail route to the Pacific coast realized $3,125, and a pair of Chinese publishing company stock certificates from the 1920s fetched $2,125 at a five-day Holiday Auction held December 17th-21st by Holabird Western Americana Collections, LLC.

The auction was held live in the Holabird gallery at 3355 Airway Drive (Ste. 308) in Reno, as well as online via iCollector.com, LiveAuctioneers.com, Invaluable.com and Auctionzip.com. The sale was packed with hundreds of lots of mining collectibles, philatelic material, Americana and more and featured a number of important collections in a wide range of collecting categories.

Day 1, December 17th, was dedicated to stocks and bonds – 712 lots in total, led by 208 lots of mining stocks and 66 lots of railroad and transportation stock. Additional categories included agriculture, banking, breweriana, the entertainment industry, Express, firearms and printing and publishing. Headlining the day was Ken Prag's massive industrial stock certificate collection.

"Within the Prag collection were some fantastic sub-collections," said Fred Holabird of Holabird Western Americana Collections, LLC. "Among these were Ken's banking collection, American entertainment, brewing, telephone and telegraph, turnpikes, firearms, printing and publishing collections. A few categories are so big they'll be split between this sale and an early 2021 sale."

The two Chinese publishing company stock certificates were a Day 1 top lot. Both were rare. One was for the Young China Publishing Company of San Francisco, issued in 1920 for seven shares to Chan Chung Pong. The other was for the Chinese Times Publishing Company, Inc., in California, issued in 1927 for five shares and signed by the company's president and secretary.

Day 2 saw a wild flurry of bidder activity. Categories included transportation (railroad passes and cap badges, ephemera and more), mining artifacts and ephemera (including geographic sort), general Americana (more geographic sort, badges, bottles, circus, cowboy, World's Fair and Exposition), numismatics (coins, currency, medals and tokens), jewelry, fire, toys and more.

To learn more about Holabird Western Americana Collections, LLC, visit www.holabirdamericana.com. Updates posted often.

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Fred Holabird